Connected

Actress Ramona Lisa Alexander is on familiar turf in a new play

By Terry Byrne, Globe Correspondent  |  September 14, 2008

Ramona Lisa Alexander seems reserved, even shy as she chats about her blossoming acting career. But in rehearsal for "In the Continuum," Alexander is a force of nature - fierce and physical, even in a scene where she remains seated in a chair.

The Obie Award-winning play, which begins performances Wednesday at the Boston Center for the Arts under the auspices of Up You Mighty Race Company, follows two women on opposite sides of the world as they cope with the news they've contracted HIV from their heterosexual partners. The separate stories unfold simultaneously over the course of one weekend. Though the women never meet, we discover that Nia, a 19-year-old from Los Angeles, and Abigail, a middle-class Zimbabwean TV newscaster, wife, and mother, confront similar stigmas - and face their challenges with remarkable good humor.

For Alexander, who plays Nia, the production represents a fifth collaboration with Up You Mighty Race, where her career started. She's also worked at the Huntington Theatre Company, Underground Railway Theater, Zeitgeist Stage Company, and Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater.

"I've known [director] Akiba Abaka since we were teenagers," says the 30-year-old actress. "It's great to come back . . . and see how much we've grown."

Although the play focuses on the two women, Alexander and her stage partner Lindsey McWhorter also play several other people their characters meet over the weekend. "It's a wonderful challenge for an actor," says Alexander, "because I shift back and forth from Nia to her social worker, her mother, and others, and I have to be really precise about who I am at any given moment."

Abaka, who is also the company's artistic director, says she's not known for casting her friends. But, she says, "Ramona is one of those rare actors who works from the bottom of her heart to the tips of her fingernails. Every inch of her is in the moment, in the character."

Alexander's powerful stage presence is apparent whether she's part of an ensemble, as in the Huntington's "Breath, Boom" of 2003, or the standout in Company One's production of "103 Within the Veil" in 2004. On stage, she seems to be speaking to individual members of the audience.

"I like finding ways to connect," she says, "because what I'm doing is about reciprocity and the reactions I get from the audience keep me going."

While she and Abaka saw a successful production of "In the Continuum" at the large Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Alexander says it will have a "real sense of immediacy" in a black box at the BCA. "This play originated in a classroom, where the two playwrights were acting students," she points out.

Alexander's electric connection to an audience is so obvious that after seeing her in "103 Within the Veil," Brandeis University professor Janet Morrison invited her to apply to the university's master's degree program in acting.

"The audition process was amazing," says Alexander, "and they accepted me even though I haven't completed my undergraduate degree." She finished the three-year program in May.

She's already worked in New York, doing a TV special for Telemundo. "I learned Spanish in two weeks," she says with a laugh. "There is only 'Yes' in my mind right now."